By The Diplomat | Created at 2024-11-27 20:51:25 | Updated at 2024-11-27 23:50:50
4 hours ago
A month after the attempted assassination of Komil Allamjonov, the former deputy head of the Presidential Administration, several people have reportedly been detained and a host of security officials have resigned or been fired. The continued evolution of the case – and what remains unsaid publicly but chattered about privately – hints at an intra-elite struggle beneath the surface of Uzbekistan’s decidedly opaque political waters.
According to the Uzbek Prosecutor General’s Office seven people have been identified as involved in the attempted assassination of Allamjonov on October 26, five of whom were detained soon after the attack. Two others – “K.S.” and Javlon Yunusov – were placed on wanted lists. In a November 25 Telegram statement, the Prosecutor General’s Office said K.S. was located in Kazakhstan and “investigative actions were carried out with his participation.”
Yunusov, only suspect whose full name has been published by the authorities, was detained in South Korea earlier in November. In its November 25 statement, the Prosecutor General’s Office reported that he had been extradited back to Uzbekistan.
The day after the attack on Allamjonov, a pair of men appeared in a video that circulated through Uzbek social media claiming to be the triggermen. To make matters even more strange, they claimed that it was all a set up – feeding a rumor that had begun circulating that the assassination attempt had, bizarrely, been orchestrated by Allamjonov himself, or as the men said “in the best interest of [Allamjonov].”
A well-placed source told The Diplomat that Allamjonov has been subject to a virulent smear campaign for months, adding the rumor that the assassination attempt was a “PR stunt” to others already in the ether as evidence of the involvement of a higher authority – what the source deemed “the office” and which other media have characterized as an alleged “deep state.”
RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service, Ozodlik, reported the identities of the men in the video as Shokhrukh Ahmedov and Ismoil Jahongirov. Both names had been provided to The Diplomat in late October by a source that linked them, as Ozodlik did, to an assassination attempt on critics of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov in Turkiye in 2021.
Ozodlik reported that Ahmedov was a “bodyguard and driver” for Yunusov, who has a colorful criminal history of his own including fraud and assault and is listed as the founder of 18 companies in Tashkent, some of which involve pharmaceuticals. The two triggermen reportedly drove from Tashkent to Fergana and ditched their car outside a cafe named Seoul. The cafe is reportedly owned by the family of Natalya Fen, the daughter of the late Vitaly Fen, a former ambassador of Uzbekistan to South Korea and, allegedly, Yunusov’s common-law wife.
Some media reports stated that Fen has also been arrested; others said that she was questioned and released. The Prosecutor General’s Office has not provided a complete list of those detained in connection with the assassination attempt (though it has lectured the media on reporting anything other than official statements on the case).
Most critically, Ozodlik’s sources claimed that Yunusov “is the Fergana Valley ‘right-hand man’ of Otabek Umarov.”
Otabek Umarov is, among other things, the deputy head of the Uzbek presidential security service and President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s son-in-law (he’s married to Mirziyoyev’s youngest daughter Shakhnoza). Ozodlik’s sources say that Umarov is connected to “the office.”
The Diplomat’s sources allege he is at its center.
As the investigation progressed, a number of high-level security officials in Tashkent have lost or left their jobs. These include the head of the State Security Service, Abdusalom Azizov; the head of the State Security Service’s Internal Security Directorate, Alijon Ashurov, and his brother, Sarvar, an aide to Uzbekistan’s prime minister; the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ criminal investigation service, Akhrorjon Adkhamov; First Deputy Chief of the Tashkent Main Department of Internal Affairs Doniyor Tashkhojayev; and Timur Sobirov, the head of the Organized Crime Department in Tashkent.
In a November 26 report, Ozodlik stated that “on the evening of November 25, it became known that Otabek Umarov had been dismissed from the post of First Deputy Chairman of the Presidential Security Service. This happened on the day of Javlon Yunusov’s extradition from South Korea.”
That has not yet been reported elsewhere.
What was being reported on November 25 in various Uzbek media was that President Mirziyoyev had been elected chairman of Uzbekistan’s National Olympic Committee and that Umarov – already vice president of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) for the Central Asian region – had been elected as the first deputy chairman. Uzbekistan’s National Olympic Committee shared a picture of Umarov attending the committee’s assembly.
There are more questions than answers at this juncture and more than a few missing pieces.
Critically, what hasn’t been stated by officials is a motive for the assassination attempt. Allamajonov had recently stepped down from his government job at the time. Much of his career trajectory since 2016 was in lock-step with that of Mirziyoyev’s eldest daughter, Saida Mirziyoyeva, until August 2023 when she was appointed assistant to the president, the highest position in the presidential administration after the president.
Sources, Ozodlik’s and The Diplomat’s alike, point to a battle between Allamjonov on one side and Umarov and “the office” on the other. The roots and exact contours, mired in the murk and muck of rumor, are difficult to discern, let alone verify. But there’s something stirring under the water.
